“Why are we the only ones here right now?” asked a constantly complaining female in silky red robes while she used her long wooden staff to help her stay standing straight due to her exhaustion.
“For some reason whenever anyone tries to sail here, they keep getting killed by a super huge sea monster. The few that did get past it say that they were then chased down by skeleton pirates and were killed. I think the guild leader gave up sending anyone else,” said a heavily armored man as he took off his helmet and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I thought one of the big guilds was going to hunt it?” Asked a skinny teen boy in leather armor as he wiped his two daggers clean and placed them in sheaths to join the several dozen other daggers all over his body.
“They gave up and decided to work on other issues that popped up. It seems like things are getting exciting for everyone back on the main continent.”
“And we’re stuck here…why are we being forced to clear all these overflow dungeons for these demons? They aren’t even offering to lend us some of their warriors to help,” asked a skinny teen boy.
“Since we do not have enough people to take over one of these cities. We have to get on their good side so that we have a place to stay and gather all the resources that we need,” said a plump female wearing black robes and thick glasses that she used to read her heavy book to chant off skill attacks.
“But they are working us to death…” complained the silky red-robed female.
“Stop joking around. If you die you’ll be just fine. That’s why they have been giving us all these tasks,” said the knight as he placed his helmet back onto his head.
“Plus the experience is nice… even if I feel like my brain is going to explode and my arms will fall off… I can’t stop!” said the young teen.
“We may have to team up with the other guilds who have managed to survive if we want to accomplish anything on this continent…”
***
On a different part of the island in the dry wilderness of the Ancient Alliance territory things were equally hectic for the Alliance, Kodria’s warriors, and the Full Moon guild members.
“Did we get them all?” asked Zundar as he rubbed his neck muscles that were cramping up.
“I think so…” said Akira as he sat down with a loud clunk of his armor. He took off his helmet and set it aside to take several large gulps of water from his water skin.
“Yap…” said a tired Fluffball who had shrunk back down to his miniature size.
Akira tossed over a blue candy for Fluffball to eat while he also ate one himself.
“It can’t be helped. We have to do this otherwise there would be a lot of dead Minos’ villagers,” said Akira as he rubbed Fluffball’s head and yawned.
Ever since returning to the newly captured thief city, there seemed to be a never-ending flood of reports of dungeons on the verge of outbreaks or in today’s case a dungeon that had burst and released all the monsters inside before collapsing.
Akira and the rag-tag team combined out of various demon race allies were forced to spend all day hunting down the escaped monsters.
Since this was the 4th one this week they were getting a good workout every day… but the boost to Akira’s levels was noticeable.
“What’s with this island? It’s like it waited for all of the dungeons to build up to a point of explosion so that it could break the record of most dungeon overflows in the shortest time,” said Klyn as he sat down.
“I heard some rumors from the traders who passed us the other day. They said the Oni are in a similar situation as us but they seem to have a strong group of supporters helping them clear up the mess,” said Zundar.
“All the more reason we need to keep training the Ancient Alliance warriors,” said Akira.
With so many dungeons needing to be cleared, there was not enough time or people to do everything at once so the [Full Moon] members and Akira’s group of warriors made two separate groups and invited the Ancient Alliance warriors to train with them.
While one group was clearing dungeons the other was outside helping protect the alliance villages and cleaning up any outbreaks. Each group took on new batches of volunteers in a rotation every other day to keep training as many of the alliance members as possible.
In this way, the strength of the warriors in the alliance was growing stronger. Currently, they were at least at the level of a basic Kodria city guard recruit… which was not much. But at least they were now able to be more helpful with protecting the Alliance villages.
This would not have been possible if it were not for the help of Spearia and the young teen warriors that helped advocate and in some cases taunting others into accepting help and joining the groups to learn new ways of fighting.
If that was the only thing they did and just returned back to their villages then it would have been just wasted energy for everyone involved. Along with the training received from the battles Spearia and the young teens had completed their training manual which was complete with many Zundar quotes and idioms that would make anyone scratch their head and wonder what they meant. It was a very manly training manual.
With the training manual finished they had made several handwritten copies and split up into small groups so they could travel to many different places to spread the word of manly training and the power of large muscular bodies.
Spearia had made sure that people who lived in a certain village and had received the training went along with them so that they could convince the village leaders to use the new manuals and use them as the new standards for training.
Although not every village saw the light of manly muscle training, the majority did agree that the results they saw in those returning from their short time of training with Akira and the [Full moon] members were better than what was being done before.
With so much training needed to build up more muscles, there was a massive need for more food to fill the bellies of the villagers.
Kodria’s ships that were anchored off the shore were all given new jobs of being fishermen!
Each day they would go out and haul in large amounts of fresh seafood for the Ancient Alliance villagers who made the long walk to the fortified hill where they could barter items the soldiers and sailors needed for large amounts of fish.
Due to how much foot traffic was happening at the shore near the fortified position a local trader decided to erect a rough nomadic shop that showed signs of being disassembled and reassembled many times before, and set it up near the fortified hill where many travelers camped for the night before traveling back to their villages.
Within a week there were over a dozen ramshackle shops and even a few homes that had popped up near the fortified hill.
Many of those that traveled back and forth to the shore let others know about this new development and just like that a new nomadic village appeared near the shoreline and was growing every day.
Seeing the possibility of a large new city and trade partner Akira had several of the sailors help plan out the building of new houses, streets, and primitive brick walls made from the abundant sandy resources of the beach.
This town would be far different than the majority of the nomadic towns and villages that the Alliance used and it was easy and cheap to build and keep it in shape.
Those who settled down in the new town and were not merchants or traders started to learn ship-building skills creating wooden canoes while others learned how to fish on the open seas.
The Ancient Alliance long shunned the ocean. For as long as they could remember it was too deep, endless, the water too salty to drink, and it was full of danger.
Now with the help of the Kodria’s sailors, they were learning of the many treasures that the deep salty ocean held.
“We should make camp here since it’s late and everyone is tired,” said Akira.
“Looks to be a decent enough place,” said Zundar as he looked around the rocky outcrop that was hidden by many stone trees.
After a quick dry dinner, everyone but the night watch quickly dozed off which was not hard to do after spending most of the day running around in such rough terrain.
As they slept a gray fog started to roll in and covered their entire campsite making it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of their own faces.
All sound was muffled as the fog covered the area in an eerie silence…
